James Howard Kunstler | June 30, 2008 This isn’t so funny anymore. Intimations of a July banking collapse rumbled though the Internet this weekend while mainstream news orgs like The New York Times and CNN pulled their puds over swift boats and Amy Winehouse’s performance technique. Something is happening, and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones…? to quote the master.

What’s happening is that American society is sliding into a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through. On the technical side, there has been unending controversy as to whether we’re gripped by inflation or deflation. It’s certainly deceptive. Food and gasoline prices are rising faster than the rivers of Iowa. But the prices of assets, like houses, stocks, jet-skis, GMC Yukons and pre-owned Hummel figurines are cratering as America turns into Yard Sale Nation.

We’re a very different country than we were in 1932. In that earlier crisis of capital, few people had any money but our society still possessed fantastic resources. We had plenty of everything that our land could provide: a treasure trove of mineral ores and the equipment to refine it all, a wealth of oil and gas still in the ground, and all the rigs needed to get at it, manpower galore (and of a highly disciplined, regimented kind), with fine-tuned factories waiting for orders. We had a railroad system that was the envy of the world and millions of family farms (even despite the dust bowl) owned by people who retained age-old skills not yet degraded by agribusiness. We had fully-functional cities with operating waterfronts and ten thousand small towns with local economies, local newspapers, and local culture.

We had a crisis of capital in the 1930s for reasons that are still debated today. My own guess is a combination of a bad debt workout that sucked “money” into a black hole (since money is loaned into existence, but vanishes if the loans are not systematically paid back) plus a gross saturation of markets, meaning that every American who had wanted to buy a car or an electric toaster had done so and there was no one left to sell to. (The first round of globalism — 1870 – 1914 — had shut down after the fiasco of World War One.)

Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passed through an event horizon out of the known universe into some other realm of space-time, never to be seen again in this realm. This would seem to be the very essence of monetary deflation — money defaulted out-of-existence.

This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it.

The banks have been doing their death dance for an entire year now, pretending that their problems are those of mere “liquidity” (i.e. cash-on-hand) rather than insolvency (no cash either on hand or in the vault and nothing else to sell to raise cash except worthless “creative” securities that nobody would ever buy). But the destruction of money (resulting from loans not paid back) is now so intense that the game of pretend has reached its terminal point. The question for the moment is exactly who and what will be crushed as these institutions roll over and die.

Complicating matters is a global oil predicament that is really not hard to understand, but which the organs of news and opinion have obdurately failed to explicate for an anxious public. Call it Peak Oil. There are only a few elements of it you need to know. 1.) that demand has now permanently outstripped supply; 2.) that new discoveries are too meager to offset consumption; 3.) That under under the circumstances, the systems we rely on for daily life are crumbling. I’ve called this situation The Long Emergency.

Our chances of mitigating this, and of continuing our current way-of-life is about zero. I’ve tried to promote the idea that rather than waste remaining resources in the futile attempt to sustain the unsustainable (i.e. come up with “solutions” to keep suburbia running), that we should begin immediately making other arrangements for daily life — mainly by downscaling and re-scaling everything from farming to commerce to the way we inhabit the landscape — but my suggestions have proven unpopular even among the “environmental” elites, who are too busy being entranced by new-and-groovy ways to keep all the cars running.

So where we are at now is the equivalent of standing in the slop by the ocean shore under a gathering hundred-foot-high wave that is about to come crashing down on our heads. Since I sure don’t know everything, I can’t say how this will all play out in the months ahead, especially with the presidential election coming at the exact moment that voters will be turning on their furnaces for the cold and dark winter beyond. I would venture to say that so far our society as a whole has done a piss-poor job of comprehending the situation. But there is still the possibility, with four months of politicking left, that the nature of our predicament can be articulated in a way that few can fail to understand, the way Mr, Lincoln articulated the terms of the Civil War on the eve of its fateful outbreak. ————- James Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis.

His latest nonfiction book, The Long Emergency describes the changes that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.

If we want to improve education, effectively deal with environmental issues, create meaningful jobs, improve health care and bring peace to the world, we can stop asking ourselves, what’s going to work best for ME exclusively and start asking ourselves what’s going to work best for ALL of us?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in personal terms?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of business?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of education?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of the environment? And what’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of peace?

Too often selfishness is disguised as altruism in a ME first environment.

When we ask ourselves life-enhancing questions like these we become consciously engaged in creating our own reality. From the time we start school, we’re told to “Sit down, shut up and do as you’re told because I’m the teacher and I know what’s best for you!” This message is conveyed to us in both words and actions. In Catholic school, we’re told, in both words and actions, “You’re basically bad because Adam and Eve ate an apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against God’s express wish.” In catechism, we were also told “You can’t trust the flesh (your body) because it will always betray you.”

Wow, can you think of anything more damaging or mind-deadening than being given messages like these when you’re young? It’s especially damaging when these “commands” are delivered with great conviction from trusted “authorities”. If we believe we’re bad and can’t trust ourselves, how are we going to be inspired to learn and how can we become anything but self-conscious, inhibited and closed? As a former public transit driver, I can tell you that many students in public education are suspicious and distrustful of people in authority, even bus drivers. On the other hand, Montessori students and home schooled kids were the most open, curious and friendly. To them, I was just another person, another source of information for a curious and open mind.

Every idea is a suggestion and if we tell ourselves we’re bad, we’ll act bad. If we think we can’t trust ourselves, we’ll dis-trust ourselves and support institutions that oppress us. The way out of this morass is to question our basic assumptions and start asking ourselves good questions. This way, we become imaginatively engaged in learning and “growing” ourselves. It might even help to redefine success. Currently, success is defined by how much money, power and privilege we posses. What if we defined success by how close we are to being who we love to be, doing what we love to do? When all we ask is, what’s going to work best for me, we psychologically disconnect from others and life becomes competitive, a matter of survival of the fittest. A belief in separation and competition attracts associated ideas like kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, predatory concepts we see dramatized in life, work and art every day.

How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which in turn, forms our reality. Until we start asking questions and stop assuming we know the answers, we will continue to recycle tired old ideas like, “build new schools” or “pay teachers more money” and children will learn, not that we shouldn’t do these things. But, why not take advantage of natural passion in education? If we truly want to support our children and help them create a more pleasing reality than ours, let’s make learning fun by teaching them how to ask questions and listen/look for answers. When we ask ourselves, who do I love to be and what do I love to do, we throw open our minds to every possibility and that, in and of itself, is exciting. And when we begin to figure out who it is we love to be and what we love to do, we have natural passion and spontaneity on our side, inspiring us to new heights of creativity and achievement . The desire to learn is built in to who we are. All we have to do as children, adults, parents and teachers is follow our bliss, be who we love to be and do what we love to do!

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Monk and Philosopher)

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I’ve added a link to your website from my blog. I find your world view exciting and compatible with my own.

Instead of asking ourselves, what’s going to work best for me, the Law of the Jungle – based on a belief in separation, scarcity and competition; we need to ask ourselves, what’s going to work best for ALL of us, in personal terms, and in terms of business, education, the environment and peace? This question is based on the Law of the Body or a belief in oneness, cooperation and sharing. By highlighting businesses that operate democratically, WorldBlu is showing us the light and the way.

How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which in turn, forms our reality. There are many models (ideals) in the world, and beyond, to pattern our behavior after. In an enlightened world, there is no right or wrong, good or bad, there just IS. There’s what works for us and what works against us. Once we move away from the Law of the Jungle as the primary model for business behavior and life in general, our definition of success will change. Instead of measuring success by the amount of money, power and privilege we possess (an objectified, material-based definition), success will be measured by how close we are to being who we love to be, doing what we love to do (a subjective or personal, emotion-based definition).

This definition takes advantage of natural passion. When we strive to be who we love to be and do what we love to do, we empower ourselves. We become self-directing, self-motivating, creative, loving AND cooperative. We acknowledge both our oneness AND individuality. What can be more exciting, or worth doing, than changing ourselves and the world for the better?

You’re welcome to submit an article that describes the mission of WorldBlu. It will be published under Business. When my main website, http://www.realtalkworld.com is finished, people will be able to upload their own material in a “MySpace” like environment. The theme for Real Talk World is: Changing Ourselves and the World for the Better with Real talk!

Happy Trails,

Pete

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We all want to be free to be ourselves and do what we want in life, don’t we? We want to be free of judgment and fear, criticism and condemnation. The question is, how can we be free to be and do what we want when we consistently act in ways that hurt ourselves and others? Why do we not trust ourselves and one another? The answer is simple and we know what it is; it’s our survival of the fittest, Law of the Jungle mentality. When we think we’re all separate and life is a matter of survival of the fittest, we become predators and each one of us becomes fair game for the other. It’s eat or be eaten, kill or be killed in the minds of many. By choice or out of ignorance, we create the need for oppressive government, religion and laws, external regulation and control, to protect us from ourselves. As Pogo profoundly observes: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The problem is not outside us, it’s inside us, in the form of beliefs. If we choose to believe we’re separate and there’s not enough to go around, we’ll see the need to “fight” for survival, and enough will never be enough. When we see ourselves as one, interdependent and separate, we’ll work together for survival. It’s all a matter of perspective! When we treat ideas about who we are and what reality is like sacred recipes in a cookbook, never questioning or challenging them, they control our behavior, not us. When we mindlessly stick to old beliefs, like old recipes, we create our reality by default, not conscious design or intention. We need to actively challenge both our personal and cultural beliefs if we’re not happy with the reality we’re experiencing.

We are not bad, it is our ideas about who we are and what reality is that are bad.

“Trust us!” say some business and political leaders. “Greed is good, and markets free of regulation will correct themselves.” We all want freedom but freedom to do what – rape, pillage and steal? In a speech given March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry convinced the Virginia House of Burgesses to commit troops to the Revolutionary War in America’s fight for independence from England and the colonies it controlled in America. The final and most memorable phrase of Henry’s speech was, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” New Hampshire’s state motto, currently, is “Live Free or Die”. Just before my discharge from the Air Force in 1964, I had an epiphany. I realized all I wanted to do was be me! Isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we all just want to be ourselves? But, how can we be free to be ourselves and do what we want if we don’t include that same freedom for everyone?

“Okay”, you say, “but how can I give freedom to you if all you want is to steal or destroy everything I value to enrich yourself? That won’t work!”

No, it won’t, if my world view is limited and all I ask myself is, What’s going to work best for me?

Before we ask the question, What’s going to work best for me, we need to ask, What’s going to work best for ALL of us? By including everyone and all of nature in our calculation, not only do we acknowledge our oneness with (and separation from) everything, we cover all the bases. When we ask ourselves questions like What’s going to work best for ALL of us, in personal terms, and in terms of business, education, the environment and peace?, we are giving ourselves credit for being able to find good answers to these questions, whether they originate with us or not. When we ask questions like Who do I love to be? and What do I love to do?, we become conscious shapers of both ourselves and our reality, not mindless followers of established cultural and family patterns. Nor are we simply “reacting” to life.

WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY

During the course of everyday events we often forget the role of thoughts in the forging of our material reality. We get lost in the visible symbols, the material by-products of our imaginations, forgetting the invisible blueprints from which they, and we, emerge.

Pure energy, like money, its material equivalent, is shaped into matter and experience by thought. It can be used to lift up or smash down, to build character or destroy character, to express love or express hate, to beautify or make ugly.

The purpose, or challenge, of life is to learn how to use thought in its various forms to shape energy into a pleasing reality. The prize is a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of a job well done. And, like learning to walk or talk, it is a personal, subjective endeavor that requires creative aggression. It is a great balancing act, where one must accept falling down in the course of learning how to stand up.

Remember:

Thoughts are “things” with a reality of their own and you, an artist. With thoughts in the forms of belief, attitude, value and expectation you paint the landscape of your life. CREATE A GREAT DAY!

“Reality” starts with the interaction of consciousness and energy, thoughts and emotions. What we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our skin, taste with our tongue and smell with our nose is the energy of our thoughts and emotions after they have condensed into matter or experience. What our bodies call the “present” is the past for consciousness and energy because new thoughts and emotions are already hard at work forming the next moment of our material experience. Just as a glass mirror reflects the image of our physical body, reality reflects the nature of our beliefs. If we see something in our lives we don’t like, we’re meant to change it. Obviously, some things we can’t change. For example, once we lose a limb, unlike some species, we can’t grow it back. When we see that our policies (beliefs and behavior) cause us and others, more pain than pleasure, more harm than good, we can and should change them.

“God”, or the consciousness and energy of All That Is, lives within us. Therefore, the best, least traumatic and most efficient way for us to change the world for the better is for each of us to change ourselves for the better. Otherwise, as our rich history informs us, others will take it upon themselves to do it for us and who knows what or how they’ll choose to do? Here are several ways we can change ourselves for the better:

We create our reality from what we choose to believe. For example, if we believe that all men are separate and life is a matter of survival of the fittest, we’ll create a world of fear, competition, violence and pain. If we believe that all things are both one and separate and that all life is interdependent, we’ll create a world of love, partnership, peace and pleasure. If we hate ourselves, we’ll treat ourselves and others badly. If we love ourselves, we’ll treat ourselves and others well. What we’ve done in the past is not important. What we do now and in the future is what’s important.

We need to take full responsibility for creating our reality. In other words, don’t waste time blaming ourselves, our parents or society for the things we don’t like about ourselves or the world. The only reason we blame ourselves and others is because we’re not yet taking full responsibility for what we believe, for the ideas in our belief system that create our reality.

We need to get clear on what works for us and what works against us. Each one of us is a unique, individualized expression of All That Is. There is no right or wrong, good or bad, there just Is. There is what works for us and what works against us, what brings us pleasure and what brings us pain.

We need to take action every day! We need to ask questions, look for answers and keep a journal. The more time we spend bemoaning the present, the less time we have to change our future. We need to take a survey of how we spend our time and energy. For example, how much time do we spend debating issues with other people to see who’s right or wrong, good or bad, smart or stupid, instead of looking for solutions that work best for all of us? How much time do we spend listening to news about the state of the world instead of doing something to change it? How much time do we spend complaining about life and making excuses for ourselves, instead of doing something constructive about the circumstances we find ourselves in? (We shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this either because cultural beliefs like “you’re basically bad, you can’t trust yourself, you’re the result of a cosmic accident”, and “genes control your looks, sex, sexual orientation, intelligence and behavior” program us to accept our fate and not question it. Ideas like these tell us we can’t change so why bother?)

To start, ask questions like: Who are we? What’s reality? What’s the purpose of life? Who do I love to be? What do I love to do? What’s going to work best for ALL of us, in personal terms, and in terms of business, education, the environment and peace? To get answers, use these questions as the title of a paper for school or for yourself. Hold these questions in your mind before falling asleep and write down any information you wake up with in the morning. Meditate on these and other questions you want answers to. Use the creative nature of All That Is to find answers and then challenge them until you feel certain the answer works for you and everyone. (See: Ask Value Questions and Listen for Intuitive Answers)

Make the jump from a Value Judgment World (external value system) to a Value Fulfillment World (internal value system). The ideas we hold as beliefs serve as the building blocks for the creation of our reality. To the extent we fail to question or take responsibility for our own beliefs, we create the need for an external value system (which, in and of itself, can lead to abuse) to control our behavior for our own safety and the safety of others. In effect, we define ourselves as children who need “Big Brother” controls. To the extent we understand and apply the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you., we eliminate the need for external control.

Say, “I love myself” to yourself until you actually feel it. By going through the process of repeatedly saying to yourself, “I love myself.”, you begin to see how good you are, how much you do, and how well you do it. This process serves as an antidote to cultural messages that seek to control who you are and what you do. The more we can love ourselves, the more we can love others. The more we can appreciate ourselves, the more we can appreciate others. Let’s stop being Master Fault Finders and start becoming Masters of Appreciation!

Without taking full responsibility for creating our reality, how can we grow and how can we expect to be free?

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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Each one of us will support the candidate we think best represents our values, who best reflects our world view and the promise of survival. Sadly, this includes our views on such non life-threatening issues as race, religion and sex.

Those of us who believe more in separation and competition (every man is an island, life is a contest to determine who wins and who loses) will support John McCain.

Those of us who believe more in oneness, separation and cooperation will support Barack Obama.

I added the word “more” in each statement because it brings each statement closer to reality. Our belief systems are dynamic and changing all the time. There are reasons for everything we do and when those reasons change, so do our belief systems.

Last night, September 26, 2008 on CNN, Barack Obama was considered the clear winner by every measure during and immediately after the debate. In the Political Analyst poll, he won by a score of 2 to 1 (44 to 22, after subtracting the negatives from the positives). In phone polls immediately after the debate, Obama came out on top. Today, the main stream media is beginning to spin the truth and say that McCain won because he sounded “stronger”. (Slate said, “Tie goes to Obama” and Newsweek said, “Win to McCain”.)

Closed is more like it. As McCain criticized Obama for his willingness to talk with opposition leaders, I couldn’t help but tie it to family life and relations. Giving people the silent treatment works, alright but it works against you, not for you! I know, I used it early in my marriage, and even with my young children. As far as I was concerned, it was my way or the highway. I was unwilling to consider anyone else’s needs or compromise. I wouldn’t say I was simply a spoiled child; just that I didn’t know any better. Does this sound familiar?

Another thing that bugged me last night was the way Republican and Democratic advisors tried to spin the results immediately after the debate, in an attempt to shift public opinion. An advisor to John McCain, Nicole Wallace, (still on CNN) tried to make it seem like McCain ran away with the debate. As I watched her spin a tale far from the reality of public opinion, I was dumbfounded. She reminded me of a talking doll with a string in back. Pull the string and you get a predetermined message that never changes, no matter what the circumstances. Like some hollow man, her response seemed devoid of all reason. To a lesser extent, you could say the same of Democratic advisor, Paul Begala, and Republican advisor, Bill Bennett, although they were more obvious about it, like they knew it was a joke and you were in on it.

I don’t know how people can do this! Many years ago I was chairman of the Parent- Teacher Committee at my children’s elementary school in San Francisco. One of our responsibilities was to select an architectural firm to build a replacement school. In the process of interviewing various firms, the liaison from the Redevelopment Agency and I became friends. We’d go out to lunch together and once he even asked me to attend a community meeting with him in another part of the city. The next time we had lunch, he asked me if I wanted a job with the Redevelopment Agency. He knew I had a college degree but was currently staying home to take care of the kids while my wife worked.

As we sat in his car after lunch, he told me I had paid my dues and it was time to get my reward. He then offered me an Executive Assistant job at the Redevelopment Agency that sounded interesting, although I did wonder if I was qualified and could be effective at it. In exchange, he went on, “All you have to do is support my agenda.” As this statement sank in, I felt a gigantic invisible snail crawl over me, depositing slime in every crack and crevice of my body. What?, I quickly responded, You’ve got to be kidding; I can’t ignore my own conscience! If I can’t be my own person, I don’t want the job! I then shared my snail story with him. I don’t know if he was embarrassed or angry but he started the car and took me home in silence, and that was the last time I ever saw him.

The point is, can we trust ourselves and one another if we divorce ourselves from our feelings? I look at feelings as part of a democratic process. For me, they represent the collective reaction of my entire body and everything beyond it. If we don’t listen to them, we do so at our own peril. Some people think a disconnection between thought and feeling as sociopathic. Can we afford to let sociopaths make decisions that affect all of us?

Likewise, can we trust people who believe in separation and competition to make sound judgments regarding issues that affect all of us? If you strongly believed that we’re all separate and life is a matter of survival of the fittest, would you go into public service or become a corporate executive to do what’s best for mankind or just yourself? I think the answer is clear. You’d go into public service and climb the corporate ladder to secure your own future, not that of the public. When we believe in separation and competition as a function of survival, we’re going to look out for our own best interest, not that of other people beyond what it takes to keep our job.

The danger of this negative or limited world view lies, not only in the divorce of thought from feeling, but in the addictive power of money, power and privilege. When all we ask ourselves is, “What’s going to work best for me?”, we set ourselves off on a path of conflict and, ultimately, self-destruction. Like electrons in a poor conductor, when we all move in different directions, we inevitably crash into each, canceling out each other’s momentum. Consequently, there is no net gain or work. Fortunately, many of us believe in oneness, separation and cooperation; otherwise, chaos would rule and coherent, or intelligent, life could not exist. Unfortunately, many of us do strongly believe in separation and competition and, as a result, we have a large number of money, power and privilege junkies running business and government who make decisions that affect everyone’s lives.

Driven by fear and greed, we become overachievers who stop at nothing to accomplish our goals and prove to the world, we’re somebody. We don’t recognize we’re someone already and that there’s nothing we have to do to prove it. If we could regularly quiet in our minds and let our feelings flow naturally, we’d see how amazing we are and how our thoughts, feelings and expectations form our reality.

(Competition works best when it’s kept internal. In other words, when we only compete against ourselves and try to do better today than we did yesterday? When we place our value system outside and start comparing ourselves to one another, cooperation begins to break down. The result is hurt feelings, conflict and exploitation.)

After the debate, we watched the Bill Maher show. Besides Ralph Nader and actor, Tim Daly, he had Political Commentator and Republican, Lisa Schiffren, on his panel of guests. She talked about how smart the Secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, is and how we should trust him to know what’s best for us in solving the current financial bailout of Wall Street. Hogwash, there’s a huge difference between cleverness and wisdom! It’s one thing to excel in math or English, limited fields of experience, and it’s another thing to see how ALL things are connected and interdependent. Make a change here and a change happens over there. We need to be good at seeing the big picture as well as the small ones to maximize our survivability as individuals and a country. Most of us don’t know what Henry Paulson’s personal philosophy is, therefore, it behooves us to pay attention and exercise control over this bailout process, up to and including, nationalization of the Federal Reserve. We can’t let people with self-centered and self-serving intentions shape the future for all of us. Wake up, America! Wake up, World!

Final Note

What would the world be like if, instead or competing for money, power and privilege, we cared more about becoming better people and creating a better world? What would the world be like if, instead of asking, “What’s going to work best for me?”, we asked, What’s going to work best for ALL of us, in personal terms, and in terms of business, education, the environment and peace? We need to value both our oneness and individuality, both our inner selves and outer selves to have the balance and wisdom we need to survive. By working together in cooperation, instead of competition, there are no limits to what we can create.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Visit The LifeSong Store where the world comes to shop for inspirational and life-changing ideas on T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, hoodies and more. Change the world for the better with POTS! (Philosophy On T-Shirts)

America has lost its balance, but we have an amazing, unique opportunity to restore that balance on November 4, 2008.

If you want your children and grandchildren to inherit a world of war, elect John McCain.

If you want to watch this planet lose its environmental and ecological balance through global warming, disruption of ecosystems, disregard for endangered species (and the list goes on), vote for John McCain.

If you want to see a continuation of a dishonest, self-serving and criminal government, vote for John McCain.

If you want to continue the global fight for oil, instead of embracing new and greener types of energy, vote for John McCain.

If you want to pay for war and corporate greed with your hard-earned money, vote for John McCain.

If you want to see more unemployment, poverty, homelessness and loss of personal freedoms, vote for John McCain.

If, on the other hand, you want to change the above, vote for Barack Obama!

If you think Obama’s head is in the clouds, look again; he also has two feet on the ground.

(Knowing that T. Boone Pickens is the Texas oil billionaire who funded the Swift Boaters against John Kerry in 2004, I find myself questioning his motives in settling on wind, sun and natural gas as the only alternative energy sources to oil. Wind and solar power are renewable energy sources but natural gas is not. I’m not an expert in any of these areas but it does concern me that Mr. Pickens’ plan depends on private and government land leases and tax subsidies for the development of his energy plan. He will need land use rights and new transmission lines to install wind power generators from the Dakotas to the Texas Panhandle and solar power sites from Texas to California, all of which will be owned by whom? T. Boone Pickens?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us? You say your plan will reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil and most Americans agree that will be a good thing. You say yourself, “Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.” Who would pay for it?

In your plan at, http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/, you don’t mention anything about the cost of building solar energy plants from the Texas Panhandle to California and the transmission lines to distribute that energy to businesses and homes in America. If we’re all going to participate in the creation and deployment of this new energy infrastructure, who’s going to own it, price it and control it, you? How does that serve America’s best interest? You have a good idea but we must all be included in the discussion to determine what’s going to work best for ALL of us. Until we include ‘ALL’ of us in our calculations, we’ll continue to go in different directions, canceling each other’s energy (no pun intended) out, with rare exception.

Keep an open mind:

Also, there are many new and promising technologies in the process of development. Too often, the money, power and privilege junkies among us, slam the door on anything that doesn’t profit them directly. I pray you are beyond this short-sighted mindset and encourage the people around you to keep an open mind as we seek to save ourselves from ourselves. After all, what better legacy can we leave behind than a positive and loving memory of the lessons we learned and the person we became in life.

Pete

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo

What would the world be like if, instead of competing for money, power and privilege, we cared more about becoming better people and changing the world for the better?

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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